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Category: Fellows

A new class of 16 Fellows attended the PSG-FAIMER Regional Institute at PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Coimbatore, India, April 16-21, 2008. They were joined for the final two days of their program by the returning class of 2007, who participated in their second residential session April 20-23. This occasion marked the successful completion of the first joint session for the PSG-FAIMER Regional Institute, which was launched last year.

The 2008 Fellows spent much of the first several days developing education innovation project plans, which they presented during the intersecting period in small groups made up of Fellows from both classes and members of the Institute faculty. The 2007 Fellows then had an opportunity to present posters detailing the progress they have made on the projects that they launched a year ago. The two classes will continue to build their newly expanded professional networks with on-line discussions using FAIMER’s Mentoring and Learning Web.

Director Thomas Chacko, M.B.B.S., M.D., was joined in presenting the Institute by an able team of local faculty and staff at PSG, visiting Indian faculty comprised of former FAIMER Fellows, and international faculty from the United States and the United Kingdom.

FAIMER Institute faculty member Vanessa Burch, M.B.Ch.B., M.Med., Ph.D., has been named Professor and Chair of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

A 2001 FAIMER Institute Fellow, Dr. Burch has been a member of the FAIMER Institute faculty since 2005. Prior to joining the faculty, she spent two years as a Global Faculty Advisor. She also serves as Co-Director of the Southern Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute, which began in February of this year.

The April 2008 issue of Education for Health (Volume 21, Issue 1) is now available on the journal’s website. In this issue, a brief communication entitled, “An Example of Program Evaluation Project in Undergraduate Medical Education” was co-authored by several faculty members from the Medical Education Department at Dokuz Eylul University School of Medicine in Turkey, including 2002 IFME Fellow Berna Musal and 2003 FAIMER Institute Fellow Huseyin Cahit Taskiran.

The 13th Ottawa International Conference on Clinical Competence was held March 5-8, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. Australians, famous for their ubiquitous slang, call their country “Oz,” and therefore this conference has from the initial planning stages affectionately been referred to as “Ozzawa.” Melbourne, pronounced “Mel-bin” by the locals, is the capital of the state of Victoria and is situated on the picturesque tree-lined banks of the Yarra River. Melbourne is a cosmopolitan city with a unique balance of graceful old and new architecture surrounded by parks and gardens.

The conference was organized by three overarching and interacting themes: The Life of the Patient, The Life of the Professional, and The Life of the Program. The scientific program was large and varied, and included six renowned invited speakers, 17 pre-conference workshops, more than 450 oral presentations, 26 symposia, 29 workshops, and 300 posters.

FAIMER was well represented at the conference. Dr. John Norcini presented a short communication overview of an assessment of FAIMER education programs entitled Evaluation of an International Education Leadership Fellowship Program and participated as a speaker in two symposia: Reporting the UK Foundation Assessment Programme and Novel Assessments and Services for Medical Schools, Students and Professionals: A Perspective from Several Organizations. Dr. Norcini also co-conducted two workshops: Mini-CEX – How it Works in Surgery? Is it a General Method for Work Based Assessment? and Medical Education Databases. Dr. John Boulet presented a full-length paper entitled Setting Performance Standards for Mannequin-Based Acute-Care Scenarios: An Examinee Centered Approach. FAIMER and the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) organized a symposium entitled International Recognition and Accreditation of Medical Schools’ Programmes. As part of this symposium, Marta van Zanten presented on Gathering Accreditation Data: The FAIMER Directory of Organizations that Recognize / Accredit Medical Schools. Dr. Norcini moderated this symposium, which also contained presentations by WFME, the Australian Medical Council, and Harbin Medical University in China.

In addition to these presentations by FAIMER staff, Mobeen Iqbal, FAIMER Institute class of 2007, of Shifa College of Medicine in Pakistan, gave two presentations, Medical Students’ Perceptions of Teaching Evaluationsand Health Related Quality of Life in a Pakistan Medical School; and Enoch Kwizera, FAIMER Institute class of 2007, of Walter Sisulu University in South Africa, co-authored the poster Evaluating Students’ Generic Learning Skills Early in their Undergraduate Careers – Valuable for Course Organisers?.

The “Ozzawa” conference, the first Ottawa conference to be hosted in Australia, was an excellent opportunity for FAIMER to present its work to an international audience. Additional information can be found on the conference website.

On January 16, 2008, the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana (CMCL) welcomed a new class of 16 Fellows at the CMCL-FAIMER Regional Institute. Fellows learned about a variety of teaching techniques for medical education such as the one-minute preceptor (OMP) and the mini clinical examination (mini-CEX) and worked extensively with faculty advisors on their own curriculum innovation projects. After an intensive four days, they were joined by the returning class of 2007 Fellows for a two-day combined program. The two classes converged with Mentor-Learning Web assignments and celebrated their new relationships by exchanging co-mentoring bracelets. The 2008 class presented their project plans followed by the 2007 group’s poster presentations on their completed projects. When the 2008 Fellows returned to their home institutions to begin implementing their projects, the 2007 class remained for an additional two-day program to further their knowledge and skills in research, scholarship, and sustaining change.

The hard work of participants was interspersed with a varied program of social and recreational activities. Highlights included a bonfire dinner with traditional dancers in glorious costumes providing entertainment, a day trip to the Golden Temple of Amritsar, and the sunset ceremony at the Indian-Pakistani border. Fellows and faculty alike will have wonderful memories of these experiences.

Director Dr. Tejinder Singh was ably assisted in the organization and presentation of the institute by a talented team of local faculty at CMCL, including Drs. Dinesh Badyal, Jugesh Chhatwal, Harpreet Kapoor, Gagandeep Kwatra, and Sheena Singh. They were joined by a number of visiting Indian and international faculty, as well as a guest observer from Bangladesh, Dr. Anwarul Azim of the Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College in Dhaka.

Fellows and faculty of the 2008 Southern Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute

The newest addition to the family of FAIMER Regional Institutes, the Southern Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute (SAFRI), was launched in mid-February. SAFRI, FAIMER’s first regional initiative on the continent of Africa, is piloting a program configuration that includes three residential contact sessions over the course of the two-year fellowship. The second residential session will take place in June of this year, and the third will take place in March 2009. In addition to participants from medical schools, the inaugural SAFRI class includes representatives from schools of physiotherapy, nursing, dentistry, public health, and laboratory sciences. Two of the Fellows are from Uganda and one is from Zambia, with the rest from South Africa. The same interactive teaching methods used at other Regional Institutes were used in South Africa, with great success. Faculty at the February session of SAFRI included seven FAIMER Fellows. Five additional FAIMER Fellows will participate as faculty at the June session.

Twenty-five new Fellows were added to the ranks of the Brazil-FAIMER Regional Institute, as the second year of the program got underway. When last year’s Fellows returned to work with the new Fellows, the assembled group of 50 became the largest FAIMER Regional Institute overlap session to date. An educator from the medical school in Angola was funded by the Ministry of Health to observe the program. Feedback from participants, as well as local and international faculty, indicates that the three-week program was a tremendous success. During the overlap period, one day was devoted to a National Medical Education (NME) event, which strategically focused on collaboration between the Association of Brazilian Medical Schools (ABEM), the Ministry of Health, and the Brazil-FAIMER Regional Institute.

Sixteen 2007 Fellows and 14 2006 Fellows came to Philadelphia in October for the 2007 FAIMER Institute. Fellows came from 15 countries in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, representing 25 health professions schools. Highlights of the Institute included the poster session presentations of 2006 Fellows’ education innovation projects and presentations by International Medical Education Day guest speakers Ruth Levine, Ph.D., Arthur Kaufman, M.D., and Francisco Campos, M.D.

Avinash Supe, M.B.B.S., M.S., has been selected as a member of the Quality and Standards Advisory Group for Medical Education, a monthly journal published on behalf of the Association for the Study of Medical Education.

A 2002 FAIMER Institute Fellow, Dr. Supe is the Director of the GSMC-FAIMER Regional Institute and is pursuing a Master of Health Professions Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago through FAIMER’s International Fellowship in Medical Education (IFME) program.

Dr. Supe is Professor and Head of the Department of Surgical Gastroenterology at Seth G.S. Medical College in Mumbai, India.